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A B.C. man who brutally beat a woman to death has seen his appeal of his second-degree murder conviction dismissed.

Photograph by: PNG Archive
, The Windsor Star

VANCOUVER — A Vancouver man who beat a woman so savagely that her face was dislocated from her skull has had his appeal of a murder conviction dismissed.

In May 2010, a B.C. Supreme Court jury found Robert Michael Bennight, 59, guilty of the June 2007 second-degree murder of Denise Fabbro, 52.

The trial judge, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Grauer, said he didn't know how Fabbro, an intravenous drug user, came to be a guest in Bennight's Downtown Eastside apartment, but added it was clear she accompanied him willingly.

After the beating, Bennight sat without doing anything while the unconscious victim stubbornly clung to life, then called 911 with a fabricated story of how Fabbro came to be in his apartment, said Grauer.

Fabbro was rushed to hospital but died on Aug. 11, 2007. She'd suffered severe trauma to her face, skull, neck and ribs. Most of the bones in her face were broken. Her face was smashed and disconnected from her skull.

Grauer called it a vicious beating of "astonishing brutality" and sentenced Bennight to the mandatory sentence of life in prison, with no parole eligibility for 18 years.

On appeal, Bennight, who had suffered a significant brain injury in 1983 as a result of a motor-vehicle accident, raised a number of issues.

He claimed that the trial judge had made a number of errors, including declining to allow him to challenge prospective jurors for bias against mentally ill persons, and alleged the judge misapprehended the evidence about his mental health condition.

But in a ruling released Thursday, B.C. Court of Appeal Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett said she would not accept that ground of appeal or the other alleged errors by the trial judge.

"In my view, there was no reversible error made by the trial judge and I would dismiss the appeal."

Bennett's ruling was agreed with by Justice Peter Lowry and Justice Harvey Groberman.